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Domination victory (Civ5)
This article will discuss strategies for achieving the Domination victory in Brave New World. Although it was written about the new expansion, it could also be useful for people playing Gods & Kings, although probably not for Vanilla Civilization V, because of the serious changes to the battle system introduced in the previous expansion. Requirements *Control all Original Capitals in the world. This means you need to conquer the starting capitals of all other players, regardless whether they're still in play or not. So, for example, if you control 5 capitals, and the only other player in the world controls the other 5, and then you conquer his Original Capital, the game is not over - you'll also need to conquer the other 4 capitals he is currently controlling. Also, you will need to protect your own original capital all the time, by any means possible - you can't win without that city. Domination victory is easier to achieve if you start at a large landmass. If you want to attempt a Domination victory, play on maps with a large continent, such as Afro-Eurasia. For instance, in the real world the Mongols achieved a domination victory in the year 1280. Note: You do NOT need to wipe out all other players completely! You just need to conquer their original capitals! Introduction Domination victory is the one which usually takes the most time in the game, especially on larger maps. There's simply so much land available for settling, that the other nations become too large for quick conquests in the late game! Given that, it is even more important to keep track of other players' progress throughout the game, so that they don't achieve another type of victory before you. And if they seem close to winning, target them for an immediate invasion! Technological progress For a Domination victory, the progression is pretty much clear - you have to strive to keep ahead of your competitors in military tech. Always research military technologies first, especially those that would give you an immediate advantage over your neighbors - this way you'll be able to keep up your conquest pace, while steadily advancing through the game. This strategy is very important throughout the game, but very much so in the end, when almost every technology you research will give you a more advanced military unit. While the others begin building Spaceship parts, build Stealth Bombers and Giant Robots to destroy their Spaceship Parts and bomb their Capitals to smitherees! It's absolutely possible to achieve a Domination victory without being the most technologically advanced civilization. However, if you are lagging behind in technological progress, it will become harder for you to win a game. So, it's advisable to develop your Research to keep yourself ahead of anyone in technology. This way, you will advance quickly and get ahead of everyone, even though you may not have an early game military advantage. Useful Policies and Wonders The following policies will help you in achieving a Domination victory: *Honor - This policy tree will give you a great military advantage throughout the game. It gives you a direct combat bonus against Barbarians, and later against everyone else, thanks to the quicker pace of getting Experience for your troops. More XP means more Promotions! Try to preserve early units at any cost, so that they could pile up Promotions and get to the top level ones, for example those that allow 2 attacks per turn, or constant Healing. Also, Honor helps you upgrade units cheaper and earn Gold more quickly when fighting! *Other Social policy trees - Good secondary policy trees are Patronage, which will allow you to keep more allied City-States and reap benefits in Culture, Faith and precious Happiness, which you might otherwise leave aside for the sake of military progress; and Commerce, which will enhance your Gold funds and allow you to maintain your Treasury, especially when your trading partners dwindle in some points of the game. Rationalism is also good, because this tree allows for faster tech progress. *Ideology - If you seek a Domination victory, you must choose one of the two following Ideologies: **Autocracy - Needless to say, this is the most offensive Ideology available! It has a large number of Tenets which directly increase your combat effectiveness, while also keeping up Happiness based on military structures. It also allows you to produce Units faster, maintain a large army, and so on. Also, the Clausewitz's Legacy Tenet is probably your most powerful tool in achieving a victory in the late game, giving you a direct Attack Bonus for all Units for 50 Turns. **Order - Although it has nowhere to as many combat-oriented tenets as Autocracy, this Ideology is very good for managing huge Empires, and that's exactly what you'll have around turns 350 - 400. Use it to increase the overall Production of your cities to support your military. Also, there is a very nice Level 3 Tenet here; the Iron Curtain, which grants a free courthouse for every enemy city you capture, eliminating right away a considerable part of Unhappiness upon capturing a city. These World Wonders also help you achieve a Domination victory: *Statue of Zeus - This Ancient Era Wonder gives your units Combat Bonus against cities, allowing their easier capturing throughout the game. It's a must-have! *Terracotta Army - Provides you with free units; great for increasing your army for free! Make sure you have all unit types you need for conquest at the turn of the Wonder's completion - it will provide you with a free copy of each unit TYPE! So, the more unit types you have, the more units you'll get! Be wary, however, that your treasury will take a sudden dive, due to the sudden increase in Unit Maintenance fees. *Brandenburg Gate - Gives you more XP for units trained in this city. Always useful. *Pentagon - Reduces cost of upgrading units. Very important in the late game, when that cost becomes pretty high. *Great Wall and Red Fort - These are both defensively-oriented Wonders, and although they won't help you directly to achieve Domination Victory, they'll make it easier to defend your conquests. And because of your militarism, a LOT of nations will become pissed off throughout the game and declare war on you without warning! *Depending on which ideology you chose, you can build one of these World Wonders: **Prora (Autocracy) - Won't help you directly, but maintaining Happiness for an expansionist empire is VERY difficult, and this Wonder will help immensely in that respect. **Kremlin (Order) - Greatly increases the production of Armored Units, allowing you to create a horde of tanks to initiate incursions against your weak emenies. Using Religion As usual, Religion offers you some ways to achieve your chose victory type more easily. Of course, arguably Religion aids other types of victory better than Domination, but... Think about the Crusades!!!!! You should consider adopting Piety alongside Honor if you're lucky to produce lots of Faith in the early game - this way you will not only be able to create and spread your Religion early, but also choose good beliefs and make use of them. The Celts could turn into a surprisingly good conqueror, for example, thanks to their early game unique military unit, combined with good Faith-producing capabilities! There are several definite Beliefs you need to help with military conquest: *Holy Warriors - This will allow you to buy Military units with Faith, making real use of this stats. So, instead of spending it for something else like Cathedrals, for example, you can purchase some nice Swordsmen for your army! The drawback is that this belief becomes less effective once you reach the Industrial Era. *Just War - Spread your Religion to your neighbors, and then invade them! You'll have Combat Bonus near their cities! *Heathen Conversion - Use this Reformation Belief to give your Missionaries an ability to convert Barbarian units. This way you can eventually get free units from those pesky Barbarians! *Religious Fervor - This Reformation Belief allows you to purchase Industrial Era (or later) Military units with Faith! Combine it with Holy Warriors to be able to constantly increase your army throughout the entire game! As you can see, most of the combat-oriented beliefs rely either on spreading your Religion to enemy cities first, or on accumulating large amounts of Faith which you can then spend for units. So, if you go down the Religion path, make sure you produce lots of Faith! Strategies It's obvious that for a Domination victory you need a strong military, although it's interesting that having a 'large' military (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean having a 'strong' military. Many times a well-developed, smaller army is much more dangerous than a sea of untrained, badly positioned and unsupported units. As mentioned above, accumulating Promotions in units is a very important point - try to preserve your oldest and strongest units at any cost, upgrading them as you go. If you've adopted 'Honor' as told above, around the middle game you should have units with access to the highest-ranking promotions. Those are invaluable! So, don't make risky attacks with your 'Elite' units and withdraw them when they get low on health! If exposed to concentrated enemy fire, even the strongest unit dies! So, when you need 'cannon fodder' (that is, a unit which will draw the enemy fire and is almost certain to die quick) prefer using an unit with less Promotions. Unless you're really sure that your unit may take enough enemy fire and survive a couple of turns. These is no complete combat guide here - this is for a separate article. Instead, here are the outlines of some general development and conquest strategies for the different parts of the game. General strategy #Designate several cities as 'training centers' for units - Choose ones with good Production, preferably with access to Horses and/or Iron, so that you can construct a Stable and Forge which speed up training of units. Build the training buildings in them (Barracks, etc.). Also, try building the Heroic Epic in one of them - it will give an additional free Promotion to units there. #Found or conquer a coastal city if necessary - A conqueror cannot be any good without a strong navy, especially in the maps with lots of water tiles. And you can't conquer other continents without a navy. It's better to have several coastal cities, but in any case, apply the first point of this list to coastal cities as well - at least one of them needs to be made a ship-building center. #Preserve your Gold for upgrading or purchasing units, and eventually for bribing other nations to vote with you in the World Congress to prevent harmful Resolutions from being enacted. #Try to ally yourself with a Militaristic City-State - They will give you units for free, which could be a real boon in the early game! To do this, perform Seek-and-destroy quests that such states give you first, and be on the lookout for bullying requests - with a large army you're in a good position to extort City-States, and Militaristic ones like demanding extortion! #Try to maintain a steady conquest pace - Don't conquer too many cities at once, or your Happiness will plummet! At the same time, you ARE running against the clock here, or at least against the progress pace of everyone, so don't stop your conquest. Also, when you're constantly destroying enemies, you're constantly making Gold thanks to the Honor finisher bonus. #When you conquer a city, it will always be unproductive for several turns (the Resistance effect), so you won't be able to do anything with it for a while, not even building or buying a Courthouse. So, to avoid a bigger hit in your Happiness, make the city a puppet first, and only later annex it. #Don't absorb absolutely all the cities you conquer - You don't need all of them! Look carefully on the land and resources the city controls, and decide whether or not it will be useful for your empire. This is especially valid for the late game, when you will be conquering large cities - those will Resist you for many turns, and afterwards it will take some more turns to bring them back up to being productive. Many times it's better to just raze the city and be done with it. #Last, but not least - Try to maintain your empire's ''' Happiness at all times!!!!' Unhappiness translates directly into a Combat penalty for all your troops, and this could be disastrous when you're constantly at war! In Brave New World, the penalty matches the exact level of Unhappiness (-2% per point), e.g. at -5 Unhappiness you'll have a -10% CS penalty, which is quite significant. So pay attention to that at all times, and avoid the possibilities of sudden drops in Happiness, for example when you capture a large city. You should be constantly building Happiness - enhancing buildings to keep up with the Unhappiness produced by constant conquering of new cities. And make building a Courthouse in Annexed cities a priority to negate the extra Unhappiness. Early game In the beginning of the game you'll be fighting mainly Barbarians, as will everyone else. Don't rush to conquer your neighbors, unless you're the Huns and have exactly this purpose! Early conquests could be dangerous, since your young Empire isn't usually prepared to deal with the extra Unhappiness that comes with taking a big city. And on the higher difficulty settings, concentrating your army away from your cities might expose them to Barbarian plundering, which could turn out to be disastrous. Instead, gather XP from fighting Barbarians, make Allies of City-States by performing Seek-and-destroy quests and develop your economy so you can support a large military. With the new Gold dynamics in Brave New World, it's a real danger of going broke in the first 100 turns, because of having a way large army - try to avoid that at any cost! Going broke means you'll first have your Scientific advance stymied, and second you'll lose the very same army you've built, when units disband on their own. Place a city or two near your neighbors - those will serve as bases for your future conquests. Adopt Honor first thing, and try to finish it before turn 100 - that will start earning you Gold for each enemy killed! It's better to focus on finishing this one - the benefits of a completed Honor for an offensive player are simply too great to pass. Also, try building the Statue of Zeus - that shouldn't be too difficult, because few other players attempt to build that Wonder so early in the game - most go for either the Great Library, or Stonehenge, or one of the Classical Era Wonders. Now, don't rush to attack another player, UNLESS there is the perfect opportunity: a weak enemy which is concentrating on economical/cultural development, and is relatively close to you. Just be careful to maintain Happiness and Gold and not spend your entire army conquering a single city on the other edge of the map. Middle game Between turns 100 - 150, it's time to start your conquest. Your first targets are your neighbors, for a very simple reason: it's quite difficult to move large armies in the early/middle game, due to terrain impediments, lack of roads, or lack of seafaring technology. And you don't want to lose 20 turns simply moving to your target! So, depending on the state of your military, choose one of your neighbors and attack. And yes, the state of your military, because you may have managed to amass a powerful army already, or not - so you could choose to attack a powerful neighbor, or not that powerful one. At any rate, choose a target which will offer a sure conquest, and not mire you in a long war of attrition. Also, try to choose a target controlling strategically important lands with good resources. Don't try to conquer all enemy cities at once - this might prove difficult, if not impossible, and will plumet your . Combat wears off your troops, some will die, and all will need to recover after big battles and city sieges. Many times it could be more useful to conquer an important enemy city, make strategic territorial gains, after which you can make Peace with good terms for 10 - 20 turns. This will give you time to recover and reorganize your military and supply lines. The cities you conquer in the middle game will become part of your expanded Empire core. You will have more than enough time to absorb them in your empire and develop them as your own. So, connect them with Roads ASAP, annex them when possible, and start developing. Try to conquer '''at least' ONE Original Capital in that phase - it shouldn't be too difficult, and Capital cities are usually the most productive. Also, most of them will contain Wonders you didn't manage to construct yourself, and which will improve your Empire. Now, here's a very important rule: Don't go to war with many neighbors at once!!! Even a powerful military will have a hard time fighting a war on 3 - 4 fronts, and instead of having 3 - 4 attacks repealed, it's better to have 1 attack succeed. But much more importantly, you need trade partners, both for Luxuries and for Trade Routes - without the former, you can't maintain Happiness, without the latter - you can't maintain Gold flow. So, try to maintain good relationships with at least one neighbor at all times. That is, until the time comes to invade his lands as well. Late game At this point (around turns 300 - 350) you must be finished, or almost, with destroying your neighbors, and controlling the landmass you're on. Continue your attack overseas, build a navy and aviation to support your invasion (you should already have good land force at this point). But this time try to shift the targets of your conquest - now you're not looking for easy meals anymore. Instead, look for the nations that are closest to victory, and clip their wings. A good way to determine this is Score, another is the Victory tab. A nation which controls lots of votes in the World Congress will almost surely attempt a Diplomatic victory; while the nation with high cultural influence may be headed towards a Cultural victory. You probably won't need to worry about a nation attempting a Domination victory - they will have to pass through your dead body to get it anyway. And any nation making good Science progress is very likely to achieve a Scientific victory, so pay attention! If someone starts building Spaceship parts, mark them for immediate invasion/conquest, or you risk their achieving a Science victory! Also, you will have to deal with the backlash of your aggression. It's common that after all your invasions, other nations will be wary of you. It is also very possible that they will band together and attack you simultaneously, or that nations you just made peace with will attack and try to reclaim their lands. Be ready for that, build some Citadels or Forts to defend your lands. You will need to really increase your military at that point, both to be able to defend your conquests, and to deal with the strongest foes that remain. Finally, thanks to the new late-game mechanics in Brave New World, you will have to deal with Ideological influence and with the World Congress. They can both hamper your efforts significantly - another strong nation with strong Tourism could bring down your Public Opinion and thus plummet your Happiness, while the Congress may adopt a variety of measures against you thanks to hostile alliances the others make. The only way to counter this is to increase your own Culture or Tourism sharply - you will not be headed for a Cultural victory, but you need just enough influence on your own to counter the incoming influence and bring Public Opinion back up at least partially. Also, produce Diplomats and try to bribe other nations to vote with you in the Congress, to avoid crushing measures like Embargoes. Category:Game concepts (Civ5) Category:Strategy (Civ5) Category:Game concepts